Deception

by Randy Alcorn

  The girl appeared, dressed like she’d raided the giveaway table at Salvation Army. If she didn’t live up to my apparel standards, you can imagine what a sight she was.

  She had a face that could have set off a thousand metal detectors. Rings everywhere—lips, cheek, eyebrows, half a dozen on the ears. She was a walking jewelry store. It was the same unhappy face from the family portrait, but it weighed a few pounds more, both in flesh and metal. Her hair was purple and orange.

  “Jenn Lennox?”

  “Mr. Detective?” she asked through her chewing gum. Her voice was baby talk, and her eyelashes batted like a butterfly. I don’t know if her flirtatiousness was conscious. Maybe it was her way of fishing for Frappaccinos.

  I ordered the drinks from a friendly young guy named Matt, plus the double chocolate brownie she informed me she couldn’t live without. She marched over to a stack of coffee mugs near a CD rack displaying a young male musician. She took out her cell phone and held it up to take a picture. She squealed, thrilled she’d gotten this photo. While we waited, she popped her gum, then picked it off her lip rings. Her hair was making its way to her left eye. She pulled it back, but it kept obeying the law of gravity. She kept pulling down her skirt. It obeyed a different law.

  She was a little girl trying to look grown-up. It wasn’t working. No coffee or chocolate yet, and she was already so jittery she could jump-start a car. She kept chewing her fingernails, but there was nothing left. I was afraid she was going to start on mine.

  After sitting with her five minutes, we learned that she knew everything and hated everyone. Kids have always been know-it-alls. I was, I guess. But I don’t recall the cynicism going so deep. The chief’s daughter reminded me of my Andrea at that age.

  “How did you know Professor Palatine?”

  “That’s what this is about? You said you wanted information.” Her voice was no longer baby talk, but nasal and whiny. Made me miss the baby talk.

  “You said you wanted a Frappaccino. You got what you came for, and a brownie too. How about the information? If it’s good, I’ll give you a Frap to go. Tell me about the professor.”

  She leaned forward. “I’m a senior, and they said we could take a course at Portland State. Figured I’d do it to meet guys. Philosophy was one option. It sounded cool.”

  “Why were you at the professor’s house?”

  “He invited new students over.”

  “Do you remember who took this picture?” I handed it to her.

  “Gross,” she said. “I don’t know who took it.”

  “Who else was there?”

  “The four of us in the picture and the professor.”

  “Plus whoever took the picture.”

  “The professor mainly talked with the other two girls. Cheerleader types.”

  She said it with a secretive voice—the type that makes you want to ask questions to find out what she’s hiding. So I asked for a while before I figured out she had nothing to hide. Any secrets were an inch below the surface, eager to get out … and absolutely useless.

  “I have to pee,” she said. In a moment she was gone.

  I saw the look on Clarence’s face. He appeared unsympathetic both to her and her bladder. I had the feeling she’d used a word his children don’t.

  She returned, talkative, caffeine sinking in, along with the promise of imminent sugar from the Starbucks chocolate-hazelnut biscotti and the package of chocolate-covered coffee beans she’d wrangled from me in exchange for renewed interest in our conversation. I looked at the drinks and minidesserts and considered that I’d already paid for three full lunches at Burgerville. This better be worth it.

  High on the list of things cops don’t like are: wandering, and inability to answer a question without interjecting irrelevant self-disclosure. (Relevant self-disclosure: I killed the guy; I saw the guy who killed the guy. Irrelevant self-disclosure: I was finishing up my skinny vanilla latte when I saw this dress at the Gap, and I thought Brandy would be so jealous if she saw me in it, and I …”)

  “How’d you like the philosophy class?”

  “I hated it.”

  “What’d you think of the professor?”

  “I hated him.”

  “The boy with you in the picture?”

  “I hated him.”

  “What’d you think of the cheerleader girls?”

  “I despised them.”

  Good. There was a thesaurus in her brain.

  She looked at Clarence, then me, then said, “Boring.”

  Two boys walked in the door, and in an instant she was up greeting them. She took out her cell phone and took pictures of them. Then she posed with one of the boys and coerced the other into taking a picture of the two of them, Starbucks counter behind them. She said her friend Tasha “just won’t believe I saw you here.” She punched buttons on her phone and sent the photo to Tasha apparently and said she’d have to download it when she got home and post it on MySpace.

  I took note that caffeine helps people say and do stupid things with more energy and enthusiasm. I beckoned her over and asked if we could wrap it up.

  “Do you think I’m silly, Detective?” It was one of the first nonsilly things she’d said.

  “The thought occurred to me,” I said. “But if you have evidence to the contrary, now would be a good time to present it.”

  “My parents think I’m no good.”

  “Are they right?”

  “What?”

  “Are you no good?”

  She thought about it. “My father thinks he knows everything. He’s always telling me what to do. And he’s never happy with my choices.”

  It struck me—that’s how I felt about God. A killjoy who never liked what I did, so why try? And if He didn’t like me, okay, I didn’t like Him either.

  “It’s not easy being a dad,” I said.

  “Sometimes he’s just mean.”

  “My guess is—” I couldn’t resist—“his bark is worse than his bite.”

  “You sound like him.”

  “Listen, if you remember something about the professor, or about someone who hated him, I mean way more than you did, call me, would you?”

  I handed her my card.

  “Will my dad find out?”

  “Not if you call this number. Your dad doesn’t answer the phone in detective division.”

  An hour later, weather cooperating, I decided not to take on city traffic and instead walk the half mile to Portland State University. I passed Seattle’s Best, a caffeine oasis located in the middle of a three-hundred-foot desert between two Starbucks. Had I not just been at a Starbucks with Jenn Lennox, I would have stopped. Suddenly, realizing I could justify it on the basis that I needed to warm my hands, I turned around and ordered a large coffee.

  I walked to Broadway, then headed south to the Park Blocks and Portland State University. The artsy attractions along the way made it more interesting than two laps around a track. I’ve never actually entered the Portland Art Museum, but I feel cultured walking by it. Besides, there’s a Polish sausage vendor on that sidewalk who’s made meat into an art form.

  At the University Station Post Office, I asked a vacant-looking underclassman where I’d find the academic dean. He scrunched his face, mumbled about a provost, then pointed, as far as I could tell, to the second building, Cramer Hall. The directory led me to the third floor.

  A secretary assured me they didn’t call them deans, but provosts. The academic provost was Dr. Hedstrom. He’d been a highly reputed sociology professor before that, she explained. I nodded, like I cared. She told me to wait in an undersized chair while she fetched him. I paced. The hallowed halls of academia are not my home.

  Two minutes later, the secretary returned to the reception area, followed by a provost-looking individual. He was a thick-throated, chinless man who could have shaved from cheek to Adam’s apple without angling the blade. There’s a lot of gravity in this world, and Hedstrom was carrying more than his share. I’m
no lightweight, but if I’m a moon, he’s Jupiter. Shoulders stooped, head tipped forward like it needed something to prop it, he made eye contact with the floor tiles. He beckoned with his fingers. I followed, shifting to my lowest gear not to rear-end him.

  We entered his office, which smelled of polished wood. His redwood bookcases were masterpieces. A picture on the wall showed him standing straight and slim forty years ago with a college basketball team. He’d probably shrunk three inches since then. It’s a tough world that makes a man shrink. One day, like all of us I thought, he’s going to just disappear. And then what? What’s on the other side? Nothing? Something? What?

  Hey, he’d been a highly reputed professor. Maybe I should ask him.

  Nah.

  “I am Dr. Elwin Hedstrom,” he said, as if I should be impressed.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, lying.

  He laced his fingers at the Greenwich median of his equator and plunged into what I’d told him I wanted to discuss.

  “I had my issues with Dr. Palatine.”

  “Did you?”

  “He assumed that humans are social beings by their nature and subscribed to the position of Francisco de Vitoria that statally organized peoples were in need of a legal order to govern their mutual relations.”

  It’s hard to know what to say to such a statement.

  “A rather Thomistic assumption, don’t you think?” Hedstrom said. “He was too eclectic and in many respects Hegelian.”

  “I know that name. Pro bowler or NASCAR driver?”

  He produced an unfriendly chuckle. “How quickly we make light of what we don’t understand.”

  “That was a Wolfian assumption,” I said.

  “Thomas Wolf?”

  “Nero Wolfe.”

  The professor grinned, but the grin started at his teeth. My inner child, wishing to correct this, considered whether to raise his lower teeth or drop his lower lip. I chose to resist the instinct to give him, as the old philosophers might have put it, a knuckle sandwich.

  The verbal sparring continued: He tested me by using bigger words and more abstract concepts, citing names of sociologists and philosophers. I tested him by dropping the names Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Lew Archer, and Jack Bauer. Before long we each knew the other was a moron.

  “Anything unusual you can tell me about Professor Palatine?”

  “Unusual?”

  “I didn’t make the word up. It means different or remarkable.”

  His head shook slowly, as if someone else were doing it for him. It was then that I noticed a little wooden mount on his desk, which contained a small ink bottle and a dark blue fountain pen.

  “As the academic dean, sorry provost, you’ve probably heard your share of gripes about teachers, right? I’m looking for people who disliked Dr. Palatine. Any complaints lodged against him?”

  I learned years ago never to take my eyes off someone’s face when I ask a question or when they’re answering. At the sound of one particular word, maybe a name or place, there’s a facial twitch, smile, frown, smirk, a flash of anger in the eyes, a look of fear or discomfort. That look may disappear in a heartbeat. Miss it, you miss everything. I’d just seen something in Hedstrom.

  It took him time to find his tongue. Soon after he did, I wished he hadn’t. He jabbered ten minutes without saying anything. He spoke Sominex, wrapping it up with: “One would, indeed, have to have had a long history in academics to appreciate the high standards we have rigorously met over the decades. We are absolutely aware, if I may put it that way, of our responsibility to maintain the highest standards of academic achievement and with that to provide an example of personal and contextual fidelity to certain established ethical norms, as recognized by and indeed fostered by the larger university. We must operate consistently within our own consensus of mutually acceptable norms. Inevitably certain concerns are raised, but we cannot assume these to be authentic. We have a responsibility to our faculty, our students, and, yes, to our constituency. We make no pretense of perfection, but we maintain the highest standards of humanistic ideals, as it were. Do you follow my meaning?”

  “Indeed,” I said. “Actually, I may possibly, to put it that way, have missed your meaning, so to speak. If there was one, as it were.”

  He stared impassively, but I saw fire in his eyes, and I was glad to have lit it.

  “This university,” Hedstrom continued, “must operate by our own consistent standards which may be beyond your grasp. I am not certain you comprehend either the intricacies or, shall we say, the delicacies incumbent upon one entrusted with the position that the stewards of this academic community have seen fit to bestow upon myself.”

  “That sounds like a Plutonian approach.”

  “Do you mean Platonic?”

  “No. Plato was a philosopher. Pluto was a dog in the Disney cartoons. Smaller than Mickey Mouse, but he’s a dog … go figure. You may be more familiar with Goofy, who reminds me of some of your statements.”

  He looked at me through half-closed eyes, trying to appear above it all. He wasn’t. The fire in his eyes was raging now. All the better, as I hoped it would cause him to say whatever he was holding back.

  “Where were you the night of November 20, between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and midnight?”

  “See here. I have been academic provost of this university for fifteen years, am a graduate of Dartmouth, and have been honored by the American Society of College Professors.”

  “You must be proud of yourself. Where were you the night of November 20?”

  “I wouldn’t know. That was last month.”

  “Sixteen days ago. Care to guess?”

  His head shook again, the same way, as if pulled by strings.

  “In the Ivy League you had to use the little gray cells occasionally, didn’t you? Summon up that genius that got you through Dartmouth. Check a calendar; then tell me what you were doing two weeks ago Wednesday night.”

  For the next fifteen minutes I tried to shake him empty, like a bag of peanuts. But he was a lot to shake, and I had little to show for it. He wasn’t telling me what I needed to hear. Feeling I’d lost a battle, I decided to leave him with something to ponder.

  “Our discussion raises a question, something you can ask your students. If Goofy and Pluto are both dogs, and the world of Disney should operate by its own consistent standards, then how come Goofy stands on two legs and Pluto on all four? And why is Pluto’s nose on the ground, while yours is up your—” I pointed to his doctoral certificate in its golden frame. “A doctoral thesis has probably already been written on the Pluto/Goofy conundrum, but if not, you should tackle it.”

  “What did you say your name was, Detective?” Hedstrom picked up his fountain pen, dipped it, then rested its point on fancy stationery.

  “Cimmatoni, two m’s. Bryce Cimmatoni.”

  He wrote it down.

  It was getting dark, so I boarded a TriMet bus to get me back to the parking garage. As I drove home, I kept rolling Hedstrom over my investigative tongue. I didn’t like the aftertaste.

  I considered changing my policy and conducting interviews unarmed. One of these times I was going to lose it. Pistol-whipping a professor does not look good on one’s résumé when you’re trying to get your next job as security cop at Toys “R” Us.

  Maybe you wonder if I regret not having punched the academic provost in his piehole. The truth is, I do regret it. I wish now I would have.

  Because if I had, he might not have stayed late at his office. And if he’d gone home early and his wife had nursed his aching jaw, fixed him chicken soup, and fed him Rocky Road ice cream, maybe he wouldn’t have taken Polo, his Yorkshire terrier, out for a 9:30 p.m. walk in Montavilla Park.

  And if he hadn’t done that, maybe at 9:46 p.m. he wouldn’t have been shot to death.

  23

  “She is the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet.”

  SHERLOCK HOLMES, A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA

  SATURDAY, DECEM
BER 7, 9:15 A.M.

  “WHY WOULD SOMEONE KILL Dr. Hedstrom?” Clarence asked.

  “His wallet was stolen. Looks like a mugging.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Not for a second,” I said. “The killer thought Hedstrom knew something. You attended university. What would an academic dean know about professors?”

  “He’d know the complaints filed against them.”

  “I need to see those complaints.”

  Hedstrom’s murder investigation fell to Chris Doyle and Kim Suda. Obviously, they’d be consulting me since I was one of the last to see him alive. I left them a message that I’d be spending most of my Saturday at the precinct. They dropped in around 11:00 a.m. Doyle’s lazy eyelids reminded me of a frog.

  “Okay, that’s it,” he said, after five minutes.

  “That’s what? You asked me three questions.”

  “Lots of people to talk with.”

  “You’ll be getting back to me?”

  “We know where you work.”

  “I’ll give you my notes from the Hedstrom interview.”

  “If we want them, we’ll ask.” Doyle smirked at Suda. They seemed to be enjoying an inside joke.

  “I need to search Hedstrom’s files to see what he had on Palatine.”

  “Don’t think you can do that,” Doyle said, setting his meaty chin.

  “Why not?”

  “His records are part of our case. You handle yours, we’ll handle ours.”

  “The cases are related.”

  “You don’t know that. You’re the one who’s been saying the killer’s a detective. People are wondering if it’s you.”

  “Who’s wondering that?”

  “It’s our case. We don’t want any tampering.”

  “And nothing picked up and removed from the crime scene,” Suda said. “Like gum wrappers, for instance.” She eyeballed me.

  Pretending to ignore her comment and wondering who’d talked to her, I said, “Find out what complaints are on file against William Palatine. It’s vital to my case.”